The Marked Trajectory

Four months. A third of a year. One hundred and twenty dawns on Dagobah’s trash beach, and each one began the same way: running, stretching, projectiles, evasion. I stood atop a garbage mountain, looking down at the beach. From this vantage point, I could see a view I wouldn’t have even imagined four months ago. Half the beach was cleared. Seriously—half. Where stacks of rusted refrigerators and car husks once towered, there was now grey sand mixed with pebbles and shell fragments. Not a resort yet, of course, but no longer a graveyard of household appliances. Izuku had done this. Well, not alone—Koji and I helped, and Yagi-san’s truck hauled away tons of scrap every week. But it was Green who had shouldered the bulk of the labor. The guy had turned into a freight-hauling machine. His shoulders broadened, his back widened, and his arms became wiry and strong. When he took off his shirt before training, I saw muscles that simply hadn’t existed in nature four months ago. Yagi-san knew his stuff. Alright, All Might had always known his stuff, but I kept a straight face and pretended I had no clue who this skinny guy with antennae on his head really was. In four months, I hadn’t slipped up once. Even when he accidentally exhaled a puff of steam capable of dispersing clouds, even when he reflexively caught a metal rod flying at my head with his bare hand at a speed no ordinary person should have perceived. I just said, “Good reflexes, Yagi-san,” and kept training. He appreciated my restraint. I could feel it. Sometimes he’d look at me with a slight squint, as if trying to figure out whether I’d guessed or not. But I was inscrutable. A brick wall. Absolute zero. “Seiha-kun!” Izuku’s voice rang out from below. “How long are you going to stand there like a statue? Yagi-san said today is a special day!” I jumped off the mountain, sliding down a slope of broken brick and compressed plastic. Four months ago, I would have tripped. Three months ago, I’d have kept my balance but looked like a drunk crab. Now, I landed on both feet softly, almost soundlessly, and immediately shifted into a walk. Toshinori’s program was working. My agility had multiplied. I still wasn’t a pro-hero-level acrobat, but I no longer resembled a cement mixer. I’d learned to dodge my own projectiles, launched from three ricochet points simultaneously. Learned to set a Mark on the move without breaking stride. Learned to roll, tumble, and even do a backflip—the last one, admittedly, was still hit-or-miss, but the progress was undeniable. Koji, watching my exercises, once said, “You move like a hero on TV.” I’d laughed it off, but a warm feeling spread inside me. I’d been praised. Not for my Quirk. For my persistence. “Special day?” I asked, approaching Izuku. “What’s special about it? Is Yagi-san bringing us donuts?” “No, not donuts!” Izuku laughed nervously. “He said… he said something important. For me. And for him.” I raised an eyebrow. Izuku looked wound up. His fingers were fidgeting with the edge of his track jacket, and his eyes darted across the beach as if searching for something or someone. Over four months, I’d studied his habits thoroughly. He only got this nervous before important events. Before his first conversation with Yagi-san. Before telling me about his “secret trainer.” Before the school festival. “Green,” I placed a hand on his shoulder. “You look like a squirrel that downed three cans of energy drink right now. Exhale. Whatever it is, you’ll manage.” “You think so?” “I know so. In four months, you’ve gone from a weakling to a person who carries refrigerators on his back. Whatever Yagi-san has planned, you’re ready.” Izuku took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a couple of seconds, then nodded. His shoulders relaxed slightly. I made a mental checkmark: managing my partner’s psychological state was also part of the training. “Thank you, Seiha-kun,” he said. “I just… I’ve just been waiting for this day. For a very long time.” “What day exactly?” He opened his mouth to answer, but at that moment, a familiar skinny figure appeared on the stairs. Toshinori Yagi was descending towards us with his usual shuffling gait, but there was something different in it today. A certain heaviness. Resolve. He wasn’t smiling his usual wide smile. His face was serious, almost solemn. Koji, who had been warming up with dumbbells made of compressed trash, froze mid-curl and stared at Yagi-san. “Oh,” he said. “I think something epic is about to happen.” “Koji-kun,” Yagi-san stopped a couple meters away from us. “Could you finish early today? I have a special conversation to have with these two.” Koji shifted his gaze from Yagi-san to me, then to Izuku. He was a sharp guy and immediately understood this was something personal. Something that didn’t concern him. “No problem, Yagi-san,” he lowered the dumbbells onto the sand. “I need to get back to the home early anyway. Ryohei asked for help with his camouflage, he wants to try some patterns.” “Thank you,” Yagi-san nodded. “You’re a good friend, Koji-kun.” Koji smirked, grabbed his bag, and headed for the stairs. Passing me, he whispered: “If something happens—tell me later. And I want details.” “Just go already.” He left. The three of us remained on the cleared half of the beach. The sun had risen high enough to illuminate the grey sand and the garbage mountains at the far end. Waves lazily rolled onto the shore, rustling the pebbles. It smelled of salt and seaweed. Yagi-san turned to Izuku. “Young Midoriya,” his voice was unusually quiet. “You know why I’m here.” “Yes, Yagi-san,” Izuku stood at attention. “I’m ready.” “What’s going on?” I asked, though I already had a guess. Yagi-san looked at me with a long gaze. Then he nodded, as if making a decision. “Young Kaburaya,” he said. “You’ve trained with us for four months. You’ve seen young Midoriya’s progress. You know he has no Quirk. But you don’t know the main thing.” He paused, catching his breath. His skinny chest rose and fell. Then he said: “I possess a Quirk that can be passed to another person.” I feigned surprise. Raised my eyebrows, let my mouth open slightly. The brick wall developed a micro-fracture—exactly the one an ordinary guy hearing something unbelievable would have shown. “Passed on… a Quirk?” I repeated. “Is that even possible?” “It is possible,” Yagi-san nodded. “My Quirk is called One For All. It is passed from one bearer to the next, accumulating power with each generation. And I have decided that young Midoriya will be the next bearer.” I shifted my gaze to Izuku. He stood, fists clenched, looking at Yagi-san with an expression I rarely saw on his face. It was a mixture of fear, gratitude, resolve, and something else—some almost religious awe. “Green,” I said. “You knew?” “Yes. Since that day when… when I saved Bakugo from the Sludge Villain. Yagi-san told me then. And I… I agreed.” “Four months of preparation,” Yagi-san laid a bony hand on Izuku’s shoulder. “You weren’t cleaning this beach for nothing. You were conditioning your body. One For All is not just a Quirk. It is a colossal power concentrated in a single body. If I had passed it to you four months ago, your arms and legs would simply have been torn from your body upon the first activation.” I recalled the canon. Izuku, breaking his fingers during the entrance exam. Izuku, breaking his arm at the Sports Festival. Izuku, turning his body into a mess of fractures every damn week. The canon didn’t lie. One For All was monstrously dangerous for an unprepared body. But now? Now Izuku looked like he could run a marathon without breaking a sweat. He was ready. As ready as anyone could possibly be for a power capable of changing the weather. “I understand,” I said. “So what happens now?” “Now,” Yagi-san smiled, for the first time all morning. It was his hero smile. Wide, bright, full of unwavering faith. “Now I will pass it to him. Right this moment.” He turned to Izuku and extended his hand. “Young Midoriya. Eat this hair.” I nearly choked on air. Hair?! Right. I had completely forgotten this detail. In canon, the transfer of One For All occurred through the ingestion of DNA. All Might had Izuku eat his hair. It was so absurd and so in the spirit of manga that I’d simply repressed this fact from my memory. And now it resurfaced with fresh force. Izuku, however, didn’t look surprised. He’d apparently already had the mechanics explained to him by Yagi-san. He took the proffered hair—long, blond, plucked from one of Toshinori’s antenna-like tufts—and without hesitation, put it in his mouth. He swallowed. For several seconds, nothing happened. Izuku stood, eyes half-closed, listening to his sensations. Yagi-san watched him with tension. I watched too, though I pretended to be merely curious, not as if I knew how it would end. “Do you feel anything?” asked Yagi-san. “No,” Izuku opened his eyes. “Maybe it needs time?” “Possibly. Full integration may take several hours. But…” Yagi-san pondered. “You could try activating the Quirk. Just be careful. Imagine power concentrating in your arm. Don’t release it fully—just feel it.” Izuku nodded. He stretched his right arm out in front of him and focused. His face tensed, brows knitting together. Nothing happened. Then… Thin red lines ran up his arm. They glowed, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat. The skin on his forearm tightened, muscles bulging. Izuku gasped and yanked his arm back as if burned. “I… I felt something!” he breathed out. “It’s… it’s incredible! It’s like a sluice gate opened inside me, and from it surged…” “Energy,” Yagi-san finished. “That is One For All. This Quirk is now yours, young Midoriya. You are the ninth bearer.” Izuku stared at his arm as if seeing it for the first time. His eyes glistened—he seemed to be barely holding back tears. I understood him. Four months of training. Four months of believing in a miracle. And now it had happened. “Can I… can I try it?” he asked in a trembling voice. “Just a tiny bit? On something safe?” Yagi-san hesitated. I could see him calculating the risks, but Izuku was already unstoppable. He turned to a pile of scrap metal—the remnants of what we hadn’t yet managed to load into the truck. An old car husk without wheels, compressed into a pancake. A ton of metal that even I, with my Quirk, could only move using a long-distance “Send.” “Young Midoriya, I would advise waiting…” “I’ll just try, Yagi-san. With one finger. So I don’t hurt my arm.” One finger. I recalled the canon. In canon, Izuku broke his fingers to distribute the load. But he didn’t know that yet. He just walked up to the pile of scrap metal, placed his index finger against the rusty side of the car, and… “SMASH!!!” The sound was like a gas cylinder exploding. The air shuddered, a shockwave rolled across the beach, seagulls shrieked into the sky. The pile of scrap metal collapsed with a groan, crushed by monstrous force, and Izuku… Izuku flew three meters backward and crashed onto the sand. “Damn it!” I barked and rushed to him. His right arm was twisted at an unnatural angle. Not just broken—shattered. The skin on his forearm had taken on a sickening purple hue, and I could see bone fragments shifting underneath. His fingers were curled, unresponsive to his brain’s commands. There was no blood—it was a closed fracture—but that didn’t make the sight any less horrifying. Izuku lay on his back, staring at the sky with wide-open eyes. His lips moved, but no words were audible. Then he blinked, and the pain hit him. “A-a-ah!” he screamed. “My arm! My arm!!!” Yagi-san was already beside him. He knelt down in front of Izuku, gently lifting his head. “Easy, young Midoriya. Easy. Breathe. Can you hear me?” “It h-hurts… Yagi-san… I didn’t… I didn’t think it would…” “Hush. Hush. You are not at fault. This is my mistake. I should have foreseen this.” “What’s wrong with him?” I crouched nearby, trying not to look at the arm. “Can it be healed?” “It can be healed,” Yagi-san spoke quickly but firmly. “I have an acquaintance… She is the best doctor in the country. I’ll take him to her. Right now.” “I’ll help,” I got to my feet. “Where are we taking him?” “No,” Yagi-san carefully scooped Izuku into his arms. Izuku groaned, biting his lip until it bled. “You will stay here, young Kaburaya. You have seen enough. The rest is my responsibility.” “But…” “Stay. Please.” He said it in a way that left no room for argument. There was something steely in his voice. Not a request—an order. All Might was breaking through, even through the skinny shell. I nodded. Yagi-san stood, holding Izuku in his arms like a child. A skinny man in a baggy suit, carrying a boy who now weighed around seventy kilograms, yet he did it as easily as if he were a feather. I watched him climb the stairs, step by step, and there wasn’t a trace of weakness in his back. Only strength. Only All Might. “I’ll contact you!” he called over his shoulder. “Wait for news!” And he disappeared over the crest of the hill. I was left alone on the beach.

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The silence rang in my ears. I sat down on the sand and stared at the crumpled pile of scrap metal. Where Izuku had touched it with his finger, the metal was dented half a meter deep. One finger. One activation. One-tenth of a percent of All Might’s real power. Such might. What would happen when Izuku learned to control the full power? When he mastered Full Cowling? It would be terrifying. And magnificent. But right now, I wasn’t in the mood for admiration. I looked at the crushed metal and thought about Izuku’s arm. About how unnaturally it had twisted. About how he had screamed. About how many months he would now need for recovery. “Idiot,” I said aloud. “You knew, Green. You knew the power was too great. Why did you have to try it at full force right away?” But I understood him. Four months of waiting. Four months of dreams. And here he was, finally receiving what he had prayed for since childhood. A Quirk. A real Quirk. And what a Quirk—the legacy of All Might. Who would have the self-control not to try it immediately? I’d have done the same in his place. I don’t doubt it for a second. I picked up a stone from the sand and hurled it into the sea. It traced an arc and fell into the water with a soft splash. The seagulls, already starting to return, took to the sky again. I needed to occupy my hands. And my head. I took off my right glove, set a Mark on a rusty road sign, and started throwing rocks. One, two, three. Each landed precisely on target—I had honed my accuracy almost to perfection. The Mark worked flawlessly. Projectiles flew along the shortest trajectory, bypassing obstacles. Refined, reliable mechanics. But the same thought kept spinning in my head. Izuku had received One For All. In canon, this happened much later, as far as I remembered. In canon, he also broke a finger. Or an arm. Or a leg. Hell—in canon, he broke everything his new power touched until he learned to control it. So the injury was inevitable. Part of the process. Was that comforting? Not particularly. I launched the last stone and sat down on the sand. The sun was already high, starting to beat down. Dagobah Beach, half-cleaned, looked almost peaceful. The truck Yagi-san had provided stood on the roadside—empty, ready for a new load. Tomorrow, Koji and I would load it with the next batch of trash. Izuku would probably miss a couple of days. Or weeks. It’s fine. I’ll manage. We’ll manage. I fell onto my back and stared at the sky. Clouds drifted slowly, lazily, like cows out to pasture. One thought circled in my head: If Yagi-san gets him there quickly, Izuku’s arm will be restored. That’s not the problem. The problem is something else—how will he learn to control the power if even a single punch shatters his bones? But that was no longer my concern. That was Yagi-san’s and Izuku’s concern. My concern was training. Getting stronger. Preparing for the exams. There were six months left until the U.A. entrance exam. I closed my eyes. Somewhere overhead, seagulls cried. Somewhere in the distance, the sea murmured. And I lay on the sand, waiting for news that I knew would be good. Because in canon, Izuku didn’t die from his first fracture. He became a hero. And I would too.

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Two days passed. Izuku didn’t show up at school. Yagi-san didn’t get in touch. Koji was dying of curiosity—I only told him that Green had suffered an injury during training and that everything was under control. No details. A secret is a secret. On the third day, I received a message on my phone. The number was unfamiliar, but I recognized the text immediately—the digital scribbles were just as atrocious as they were on paper: “Young Midoriya is fine. Recovery Girl healed the arm. Will require a few days of rest. Training is canceled for now. Wait for news. Yagi.” I exhaled. I sent back a short “Understood, thanks” and put the phone in my pocket. Fine. The arm was healed. A few days of rest. So Green would return. I looked at the beach—at the cleared half, at the crumpled pile of scrap metal, at the grey sand glistening under the morning sun. “Alright,” I said to the emptiness. “We’ll wait.” And I went to do laps around the beach. Because no one canceled training. And the time until U.A. was running out. Six months. I’d make it. Green, just come back soon. We’ve still got a ton of trash. And a ton of plans. The ocean murmured something unintelligible in reply. But I chose to think it was agreeing.